Legal Liturgies: The Aesthetic Foundation of Positive Law
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Paolo Heritier
Paolo Heritier is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Law at Turin University. He teaches Philosophy of Law, Legal and Philosophical Anthropology, Neurosciences and the Law. His research interests include Legal Anthropology, Legal Visual Studies, Theology and Law, Theory of Liberty, Legal Epistemology, Semiotics of Law, Network Theory, Theories of Complexity, Neurosciences and the Law. Among his publications:La rete del diritto (2001),L'istituzione assente (2001),La vitalità del diritto naturale (ed. with F. Di Blasi, 2008),Le culture di Babele (ed. with E. Di Nuoscio, 2008),Problemi di libertà nel cristianesimo e nella società complessa (ed., 2008),Società post-hitleriane? (2009);Sulle tracce di Jean Vigo (ed., 2010),Estetica giuridica (2012),Good Government, Governance, Human Complexity (ed. with P. Silvestri, 2012).
Abstract
To the contemporary jurist it may seem quite nonsensical to describe law as a not-exclusively textual but also iconic phenomenon. The idea that there is some form of ``normativity of the image'' relevant to the theory of law would certainly appear unfounded. The difference between the rational normativity of the text and the mythical irrationality of the image and the symbol appears however to be clearly set out in the difference between Kelsens's and Schmitt's theories. The paper proposes an aesthetic of law intended to recompose the unity of the problem of law, placing it anthropologically between the rational and the irrational, between the normative text and the symbolic mythology of its basis, reconstructing the common root of these two theories in Hobbes' thought. Following the formulation of the legal canonist and philosopher Pierre Legendre, law is not a rational systema iuris composed only of rationally interpretable norms, but also and always a corpus iuris wrapped in images, symbols and myths, and which upholds the norm aesthetically and dogmatically, makes it presentable, credible and anthropologically communicable, and considers the ``legal liturgies'' as an aesthetic foundation of the ``third'' in contemporary theories of law.
About the author
Paolo Heritier is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Law at Turin University. He teaches Philosophy of Law, Legal and Philosophical Anthropology, Neurosciences and the Law. His research interests include Legal Anthropology, Legal Visual Studies, Theology and Law, Theory of Liberty, Legal Epistemology, Semiotics of Law, Network Theory, Theories of Complexity, Neurosciences and the Law. Among his publications: La rete del diritto (2001), L'istituzione assente (2001), La vitalità del diritto naturale (ed. with F. Di Blasi, 2008), Le culture di Babele (ed. with E. Di Nuoscio, 2008), Problemi di libertà nel cristianesimo e nella società complessa (ed., 2008), Società post-hitleriane? (2009); Sulle tracce di Jean Vigo (ed., 2010), Estetica giuridica (2012), Good Government, Governance, Human Complexity (ed. with P. Silvestri, 2012).
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
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- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Law, Literature and (Popular) Culture
- State v. Estate: Jane Austen and the Law of Inheritance
- Women, Property and Identity in Victorian Legal Culture: Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White
- Interrelations Between Law and Culture: Iain M. Banks's The Player of Games
- Working at the Intersection of the Humanities, Law and Technology: Digital Humanities and the ``Two Cultures''
- For a New Semantics of Differences: Cultural Exception and the Law
- True Blood: Multicultural Vampires in Contemporary Society
- Research
- Legal Liturgies: The Aesthetic Foundation of Positive Law
- Modernity, Experience, and the Law in The Education of Henry Adams
- Violation of Human Rights in Holocaust/Post-Holocaust Era
- Defining Legal Vagueness: A Contradiction in Terms?
- Book Review
- Book Review
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Focus
- Focus: Law, Literature and (Popular) Culture
- State v. Estate: Jane Austen and the Law of Inheritance
- Women, Property and Identity in Victorian Legal Culture: Wilkie Collins's The Woman in White
- Interrelations Between Law and Culture: Iain M. Banks's The Player of Games
- Working at the Intersection of the Humanities, Law and Technology: Digital Humanities and the ``Two Cultures''
- For a New Semantics of Differences: Cultural Exception and the Law
- True Blood: Multicultural Vampires in Contemporary Society
- Research
- Legal Liturgies: The Aesthetic Foundation of Positive Law
- Modernity, Experience, and the Law in The Education of Henry Adams
- Violation of Human Rights in Holocaust/Post-Holocaust Era
- Defining Legal Vagueness: A Contradiction in Terms?
- Book Review
- Book Review
